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Whew! What a day. I’m pretty sure my kitchen has seen more activity in the last 24 hours than in the last 6 months.

Today I churned out:

Cheezy garlic rolls

Pumpkin cheezcake

Pumpkin pie

Cream cheez-pesto dip

This is gonna be a long post, so without further ado, let’s start with the food of our people:

Cheezy Garlic Rolls

I use the recipe that came in the book that came with my bread maker that I bought a million years ago at Target for like 50 bucks.

Even tho it’s a little beat up, it’s been a good solider and still gets the job done. Yes, I could have made the dough in the KitchenAid, but I really didn’t have time to be messing around with that all day, and the bread maker does a bang up job and does all the resting and whatnot for you.

Just toss in all the ingredients, making sure to get the yeast on the top and not in the water as best you can.

Set that baby to the “dough” cycle and let it do it’s thing for the next 1.5 hours. In reality, I used that 1.5 hours to do other things, but in the blog magic world, we’ll move right to the part where the dough is almost done.

This is where you get your cheez and garlic and butter mixture together.

Shred up some Parmesan first, then and mix together with garlic to form a delicious topping.

Now you may be wondering why I went against the way of my people, and actually shredded the cheez myself. Well. Pre-shredded cheese kinda grosses me out, unless it’s the Kraft Parmesan in the green can, then I don’t care and please dump on a little extra for good measure. But the story about there being wood pulp or cellulose or whatever in shredded cheese just weirds me out, so I take a few damn minutes to shred. For this recipe, you can just do it by hand, it’s less work than getting out the KitchenAid shredder attachment.

Grease two baking sheets, divide your dough in half, and get to work making the rolls.

Dip those beauties in melted butter and then top with your cheez/garlic topping.

Now they have to rise. I already had my cheez cake in the oven, so I set them on top to take advantage of the heat. Cover them, cuz that’s what the directions say. I think they’re just shy and want a little privacy while they rise.

Viola: They have risen!

Cook for 35 minutes and, YUM:

The recipe said the dough would spit out 24 rolls. I got 23 out of it, which is probably some sort of record. I usually come in way under what the recipe says. Cuz I like big portions.

Tomorrow I’m going to slather some Kerrygold butter on these and maybe a little salt on the butter when no one is looking. Cuz salted butter is how I roll. Get it? Sorry for the schtick. Not really.

Oh and you shouldn’t be wasting calories or arteries on inferior store brand butter for your eating purposes. Get the Kerrygold or other Irish butter. It’s life changing. For baking, just use the cheap stuff.

Both this and the pie have a gingersnap crust, so the methods for both are similar.

Borrow the following:

a food processor from your friend and neighbor of Cheezquarters Central

a springform pan from your friend at work

(Thanks, ladies!)

Toss your gingersnaps into the food processor. I weighed mine on the food scale, cuz i’m neurotic like that, and had to split my bag of gingersnaps between this crust and the pie crust and didn’t want to run out.

Pulverize those cookies into crumbs and add some butter to make it all stick.

Press that mixture into the bottom of a spring form pan. You don’t technically need a springform pan, but you’ll be a lot happier if you use one.

To make the main event, first mix up the cream cheez (4 BARS!!!) and brown sugar. This is thick and will stick to your beater paddle and you’ll have to scrape it with a spatula.

Oy vey, what a thick gloppy mess.

But it gets better once you put in the eggs.

And all the other stuff.

Add that mess to your pan.

And cook forever. Like 1.5 hours or something like that. This is a good time to let your bread rise for it’s required hour.

To make pumpkin pie, I normally just follow the recipe on the back of the pumpkin can and cuz I don’t really like pie crust, I usually just buy a pre-made graham cracker crust. However, I saw his right before I put in my grocery order, and thought I’d try it. Alton Brown has a good rep and it looked pretty easy.

While your food processor is still a gingersnappy mess, you might as well make your pie crust. Same deal as the cheez cake, you pulverize your gingersnaps, add the butter and some spices, and press that baby into your pie pan.

Gotta bake this one for 10 minutes and let it cool completely, so figure that out in your process. To pull the curtain back: I made both crusts at the same time and cooked this one while I made the cheez cake filling because this crust required a 350 oven and the cheez cake and bread both needed 325. I made the pie filling later on.

First up, heat your pumpkin, cream, and spices on the stove.

For the record, and lest you think I lost my ever-loving mind, I of course used canned pumpkin. There is no way on God’s green Earth that I would do all that nonsense with scooping and baking an actual pumpkin. That’s why there is canned. I might shred some cheez, but I still have my dignity.

Anyhoo, while your pumpkin mixture is cooling, you mix up your eggs and egg yolk with your brown sugar.

Remember my grocery ordering fail from yesterday with forgetting to order the egg whites and having to actually separate my eggs? Well you best better believe I set aside one of the yolks for this recipe so as not to have to separate yet another egg. That’s why you read all your shit first, like you learned in 7th grade.

Then add your pumpkin concoction.

Dump that onto your crust.

And 50 minutes later, out comes your pie.

Mine looks absolutely nothing like the picture on the website, but that’s how shit works out sometimes.

Last but not least:

Cream Cheez Pesto Dip

Another easy one with good amounts of cheez, butter, and deliciousness. It’s more of a spread than a dip. You spread it on baguettes or crackers or whatever you like. It’s supposed to have sun-dried tomato pesto too, but Amazon PrimeNow didn’t have that, so, we’ll live with out.

Mix up some melted butter and garlic, and then mix that slice of heaven with a block of cream cheez. That brings our cream cheez block count up to 5!

For my minced garlic that I used for this and the rolls, I just have the big old jar of minced garlic from Costco in the fridge. Mincing garlic can kiss my ass. Too much effort for no reward. Plus there’s no wood pulp in pre-minced garlic that I know about. As an aside, as I was looking up the link for Costco minced garlic for you, I saw this article. It can also kiss my ass. I don’t want to hear about heavy metals or whatever the fuck in my damn garlic.

Once you get your cheez properly coated with the butter and garlic mix, form it into a ball and top with the pesto.

If you were doing this right, you’d first do the sun-dried tomato pesto, and then the regular pesto. But things that can’t be delivered don’t exist in my world, and really, I kinda hate sun-dried tomatoes, so there.

Top with pine nuts.

And you’re set to go. I like to make this the day before so the flavors can all settle. So you gotta store it in the fridge. The sweet potatoes were getting lonely in there anyway since the milk got kicked out for being bad. (haha. get it?)

I like to make a tent with the plastic wrap for stuff like this so you don’t end up with all your cheezy goodies on the wrap. Just strategically stick in some toothpicks to keep the wrap from touching the goods, then wrap.

And I got to use one of my vintage plates, so bonus. Isn’t it cute.

Sorry some of the pictures suck. You might be thinking, jeez you must have a shitty old phone or something. Nope, new phone. Terrible light in my kitchen, and these pics really highlight that fact. So while it might be a little annoying to look at dark pictures, it’s more annoying to have shitty light in your kitchen.